Mr Moore, the paper’s Beijing correspondent, managed to gain access to the tiny fishing village through a tight police security cordon in December last year to tell the story of thousands of inhabitants locked inside.

The judges praised the piece as “an inspiring story about powerless people expressing power” praising the former Shanghai correspondent for presenting “a wonderful way to open up China to the readership”.

Veteran journalist and judge Michael Binyon said the story was an original piece that told him new aspects about the country.

Inside Wukan: the Chinese Village that Fought Back beat entries from Marie Colvin’s We Live in Fear of a Massacre in The Sunday Times and The Times’s Anthony Loyd’s We Are All Dead Here.